


ashes and glass

by maelidify



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 18+ I guess maybe?, Angst Warning, F/F, F/M, Modern AU, Welcome to whatever this is, coffee shop au sort of, completely gone on raven!emori, messy!raven, no real smut but a lot of feelings, open relationship!memori
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 15:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19134547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maelidify/pseuds/maelidify
Summary: Wherein Raven is hurt and luminous, and Emori is moved.





	ashes and glass

_This apartment shouldn’t feel empty and dry, but it does._  
  
_Its lone occupant has been sitting in front of an untouched vodka and orange juice for the better part of an hour, legs crossed and hair falling loose from its ponytail. She’d thought maybe the alcohol would help, but now she can’t bring herself to drink it._  
  
_It shouldn’t be like this: this woman, the mess of a person sitting cross-legged on the floor, is better than this. She is composed of logic. Facts and structure. Any ability to associate drink with another person… well that kind of thinking belonged to_ her _, the empty side of the bed, and she is gone and fuck metaphors._  
  
_The drink goes down in one gulp. It should weigh her bones more than it does. She has always been able to carry her drink better than most._  
  
_Then she throws the glass at the wall, and the shattered pieces of it are_ glorious _.  
  
_

* * *

  
Emori pulls over to the side of the road to facetime with her boyfriend, and the rain beats against the hood of her car incessantly, like it’s trying to get in. It’s a kind of power she wouldn’t have been used to a few years back, the owning of a car, the shelter from the rain. She chalks the novelty of it up to #growinguppoor.  
  
Now it’s her favorite place from which to call John, who is away at college until the end of the spring semester, which is coming up fast. Just a few weeks, and then he’ll be here again, the crackle of chaos that is him, the warmth in her bed.  
  
His image is spotty on her small phone screen. “I can barely see you,” he says.  
  
“I’ve been practicing invisibility. Glad to see it’s working.”  
  
He laughs, his grin lingering on the corner of his mouth a second too long because of the lag. “Too bad I’m not invisible,” he says. “I look like crap right now.”   
  
“The cutest crap I’ve ever seen,” she replies, warmth creeping into her tone. It’s true that he hasn’t shaved in a while, that his hair is growing a little unevenly, as it tends to do when he doesn’t get it trimmed. She aches to run her fingers through it; she’d been wholeheartedly supportive of his decision to complete his bachelor’s somewhat late, at the age of 26, but dammit, she _misses_  him. “You’re eating, right?”  
  
“Something like it. Are you sure I can’t just burn the food hall down?”   
  
“Mostly sure.” Another half-smile, the flicker in the screen, the flicker in her heart. Yes, that; the stretch of his arms to the ceiling and back, lean and lazy. The wit hiding in his voice. That reference to his old arsonist darkness.   
  
“Where are you, anyway?” he asks. She’d told him she liked to call him from the car because of her nosy brother, but she is usually visibly in her neighborhood. This time, she is not.  
  
“I’m going dancing,” she says, and he laughs full-out.  
  
“No, really.”   
  
“Okay, a secret: that new coffee shop? Is actually a 24-hour study cafe.” She leans forward into the camera. “Too bad I don’t have anything to study for, huh?”  
  
“Tease,” he says, also leaning in. “You look dressed up, though.”  
  
“The barista,” she says. “I think I told you about her.”  
  
“Oh _her_.”  
  
“By the way, is it okay if I…?”  
  
“Just be safe,” he says.  
  
“Flirting is usually safe.”   
  
“Flirting with you is rarely safe,” he replies and honestly, it’s one of the most romantic things anyone has ever said to her.

* * *

  
The barista’s back is to the door as Emori walks in. A few patrons, probably from the local community college, are scattered throughout the tables. It is nearly midnight, and it is nearly silent. The bell from the door hinge is startling.  
  
When she orders her usual, black coffee with sugar and no milk, she notices a lag to the barista’s motions. She looks tired to the bone.  
  
Emori first noticed the barista last week, when she discovered the cafe for the first time. She wasn’t drawn in by a pretty face, even though the barista certainly had one; she was taken in by the open engineering textbook on the counter and the way the margins were crammed with notes in neat, certain handwriting.  
  
That first day, she’d seen the image of her leaning over the counter, focusing on the text, surrounded by tea lights, as a kind of beatific portrait. Emori wasn’t always a visual person, but something about the barista conjured in her a similar appreciation to that she felt towards John in his quick-wittedness and angles. A combination of factors. Maybe her face _was_ one of them.  
  
Anyway, Emori likes mysteries, and she is in an open relationship so it's okay to try to solve this one.  
  
The fun slips away, however, with the certainty that the barista is in deep distress. When she hands Emori her coffee and her credit card, she doesn’t even try to smile. There is a blonde woman working with her behind the counter, presumably the manager, and maybe that’s why there is no textbook open on the counter, but the other woman rests her hand on the barista’s shoulder for a moment as she passes by. So. Something has happened.  
  
Emori stays and sips her coffee for an hour, observing the people around her with a focus that never leaves her, even though she doesn’t pickpocket anymore. When she finishes, she leaves her mug on the counter and slips into the bathroom.  
  
She should have knocked. The room is occupied, the woman leaning her forehead into the mirror. The barista. Her eyes are puffy, her shoulders shaking.  
  
“Oh god, I’m sorry,” Emori says.  
  
“Shit. Forgot to lock it,” the woman says, and gives her a bleary smile. Her hands are braced on the sink. “You didn’t see this.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Emori agrees. Normally she’d leave, but something prompts her to keep talking. “Are you gonna be okay?”   
  
The other woman sets her face into a hard smile, something bitter. “Just a breakup. Sucks for her, you know?”  
  
“I’m sure,” she says.  
  
A moment passes. “You gonna hover there, or…?”   
  
“I’ll leave,” Emori says. “Cry away.” She’s often insensitive before she can stop herself; the woman doesn’t mind though, just laughs a little as the door closes.  
  
She was going to just leave, but she sits instead, scrolling through her phone. When the woman leaves the bathroom, her coat is on; her shift is over. Her slight limp is more pronounced than usual. Maybe it happens when she’s tired, or emotionally distraught.   
  
“Hey,” Emori says as she passes. “You’re an engineer, right?”  
  
“Creepy,” the other woman says. “Do I just _exude_ engineer or…?”  
  
“I saw your book the other day. I’m one, too. A mechanic, actually.”  
  
“Me too.” The woman studies her as if seeing her for the first time.  
  
There’s a pause and then Emori says, “I swear I’m not trying to be forward, but if you want to talk shop or something, distract your mind…”   
  
“Yeah,” the woman says, after a beat. “Okay.” To Emori’s surprise, she plops down across from her at the table, leg splayed to the side. “I’m Raven, by the way.”  
  
Good. She can finally stop calling her ‘the barista’ in her inner monologue. The name fits her, too; dark eyes, sharp cheekbones. “Emori.”  
  
“Emori.” She stretches the name, like she’s tasting it. “Just because I’m curious, what’s with your hand?”   
  
She says it casually, interest rather than insult. Emori flexes it unthinkingly. “Congenital deformity. What’s with your leg?”  
  
“Drive-by shooting.”  
  
“That’ll quiet a room,” Emori says, a little startled herself.    
  
“Wanna trade?” The way Raven is looking at her, the warmth in those dark eyes. This joke that only the disabled and sick can truly understand, how hard it is to dig a life with a body that doesn’t fully cooperate.  
  
“For a day, sure.”  
  
The laugh is a fall of rain, and Emori knows suddenly and with some certainty that she could sleep with this woman if she wanted to. She’s in pain, she wants distraction. She’s bright light, and bright light likes to meet like.  
  
Emori won’t do it. But she can’t say it isn’t tempting.

* * *

  
It takes a week for the resolve to falter, and to be fair to Emori, Raven pretty much straight up asks her if she wants to have sex.  
  
It happens like this: she’s at Raven’s apartment, watching bad reality television and covering chips with hot sauce.  
  
“He really doesn’t mind if you sleep with other people?” Raven is asking, and Emori shrugs, picking up the bowl from the kitchen counter.  
  
“Neither of us get jealous,” she says. “Not in that way. We know we’re capable of caring about multiple people and staying in love.”  
  
Raven laughs in disbelief. “Wild. I couldn't do that, not in the long term."  
  
Emori wonders for a moment if Raven’s mysterious ex was unfaithful. She doesn’t know anything about the relationship that ended a week ago, just that there are empty frames on the wall and a palpable bruise on Raven’s heart, something that hurts if prodded too intently.  
  
“So,” Raven says, “are we gonna sleep together or what?”   
  
Emori almost chokes on a potato chip. “What?” she says.  
  
“Oh, don’t act all innocent. You’ve been checking me out since you first saw me.”   
  
The mad dance of lines on the patterned couch is suddenly fascinating; Emori’s cheeks warm, because she is used to being the aggressor. This is uncharted territory.  
  
“You just got out of a relationship. I don’t want to…”  
  
“What, hurt me?” Raven looks at her and she can’t look away. “It takes a lot to hurt me. I think you’re like that, too.”  
  
“Maybe I am,” Emori says. And Raven’s hand is on her face, tracing the tattoo on her brow. And Raven is kissing her, soft, warm. She leans into it and buries her hands in Raven’s hair, freeing it from its customary ponytail, reveling in the warmth of her skull, the shape of it under her hands. The mind under there.

* * *

  
For a week, it’s like a fire. Wake up in Raven’s bed, go to work at the auto shop, go to the cafe. A fire of exchanging looks with Raven, of watching how her jaw works when she deals with a particularly annoying customer, of knowing she’ll be allowed to go home with her and taste the coffee on her skin, taste the sting of salt on her neck and elsewhere. Something like ashes.  
  
“Should I be worried?” John jokes when they next video chat. The glow must be apparent. She pushes a lock of hair behind her ear.  
  
“No, idiot. But I like her,” Emori admits. “I think you’d like her too.”   
  
“We’ll find out,” he says wryly, and for the first time, Emori wonders if she notes a strand of jealousy in his tone. They’ve both had other partners while together; John's are usually emotional, hers physical. Is this so different?  
  
“John,” she starts, but he cuts her off.  
  
“Have fun, okay? Be safe.”   
  
They exchange a look. Hers says _are you sure?_ His says _stop worrying for no reason._  
  
“Don’t let the finals eat you,” she says finally, changing the subject.  
  
“Are you kidding? They’d have to choke on me.”

* * *

One day, after hanging up with John, Emori notices a text from Raven:  _go grocery shopping with me?_ Something about the notion is so domestic that it tugs at her in ways she can't quite define. 

She meets Raven at her place and the two of them walk to the nearest market. Something tense in the other girl's shoulders, and her limp is slightly more pronounced. She looks haunted in a way that isn't fixed.   
  
"How are you holding up?" Emori asks cautiously, even though they'd woken up in bed together that morning, Raven's hand tangled in the cords of her tank top, holding her tight, like she was going to leave. 

"Not dead yet," Raven responds as they enter. "Just looking at things through crap-colored glasses."   
  
A nice cliche. "Glass of mud half empty?"   
  
A small grin crosses her companion's face. "You ever hear the one about the optimist, the pessimist and the engineer? The engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be." 

Startled by the bad joke, Emori laughs, and Raven is impossibly luminous in the crappy grocery store lighting. She is suddenly and intensely moved by the entirety that is her.  

"Did I ever tell you I'm a criminal?" Emori asks, and Raven snorts out a laugh. 

"Doesn't surprise me. You're sneaky as fuck."   
  
Emori brushes off the compliment/insult hybrid. "I used to be able to sneak anything out of a store. Anything. It's how I wooed John."   
  
"Any store?" Raven asks, and Emori doesn't miss how she changes the topic away from her partner. It's something she shouldn't dissect until later, the idea that her relationship with Raven might be dependent on her boyfriend's temporary distance. Monogamists are often like that, but the idea of parting isn't always a pang of this kind of lightning, an insistent kind of sting.   
  
Anyway.  
  
She focuses on the topic at hand. "Most stores. I don't do it anymore, though."   
  
Raven stops, hand brushing along a row of cereal boxes. Emori hadn't even noticed they'd crossed to the breakfast asile. "Wait a minute, are you trying to impress me?"   
  
"Of course not," Emori says smoothly, and reaches over to fix the chain of Raven's necklace, which is a small seashell. The other woman starts at the touch of hand to clavicle, their eyes meeting. Breath to breath. Now that she knows exactly what Raven tastes like, this kind of gesture is even more sweeping than it would normally be. An equation to stare at, unmoving, as the minutes storm away.   
  
Raven looks down at her necklace and breaks the glance. 

* * *

(The middle of the night is always parenthetical.)   
  
(But it happens like this: a few days later, Raven’s bed is no longer warm. Emori wakes up curled in a ball around herself, walks out of the tiny bedroom with bare feet to see Raven sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. A photograph is in her hand.  
  
“I’ll leave,” Emori says. The woman in the photograph is beautiful, wild, all full hair and intense eyes.  
  
“Don’t,” Raven says, and it’s soft, and it’s a plea, and when Emori wraps her arms around her she shakes, like every touch hurts.)  
 

* * *

  
As the days pass, as spring widens and John’s return is more and more imminent, Emori wonders if she’d dreamed the woman in the photograph, the way holding Raven from behind had seemed to burn her, push some sort of an arrow through.  
  
She knocks on Raven’s door one day and hears voices behind it. When Raven opens, the woman from the photograph is there, leaning against the kitchen counter.  
  
“Sorry, Emori,” Raven says, looking at her with a disconcerting kind of softness. “This isn’t a good time.”   
  
Emori fixes the woman, Raven’s ex, with a dark glance, though her reply is for Raven. “I’ll leave,” she says. “Let me know if you need anything.”    
  
“I will.”  
  
She closes the door after a small pause, but Emori cannot will herself to move. The voices drift through the thin wall:   
  
“She seems to have helped you.”  
  
“Luna, she’s none of your business.”  
  
“I know.” The woman, Luna, has a softer voice than Emori had imagined. She wants to hate her. She wants to _hate_ her.  
  
“Why are you here?” Raven has a tough exterior, a steely kind of skin. This is all vulnerability. Emori wonders suddenly if the softness in her tone was for her or for this woman, for something beautiful that had drifted back to her.  
  
“I needed to leave,” the woman says. “But I also needed to come back.”   
  
“Don’t give me that life-cycles bullshit.”  
  
“It’s all I have. I know I hurt you.” A prolonged silence, the shuffle of feet. The hallway is lit by dim fluorescence. This kind of pain is something Emori understands from a long-ago breakup with John. So is this reconciliation.  
  
Raven isn’t like her, though. Her light can only be given to one partner. She’d made that clear.    
  
“There’s a kind of darkness in me,” Luna is saying now. “I’m working on it. I can keep working on it with you next to me, if you’ll forgive me.”   
  
And then Raven tells her to go, her voice low and broken, and Emori slips into the stairwell before she can be seen.  


* * *

  
The decision is clear.  
  
The next day, Emori steals an entire rotisserie chicken from a grocery store. An old skill. Oddly humorous for a symptom of regression.  
  
“The fuck is this?” Raven asks when Emori plops the container down on her table, along with a bottle of wine.    
  
“Dinner,” she says. “Our last, I think.”   
  
Raven looks at her and there’s a sadness in her eyes, but nothing there says the words are untrue. “She hurt me.”  
  
“And I hate her for that,” Emori says. “But you don’t.”  
  
Raven sits, her leg splayed like it was during their first real conversation at the cafe. She looks so put-together for someone Emori has seen completely fallen apart, in the distress of finding her crying as a stranger, in the beautiful lines of her when they made love. She is fragmented in Emori’s brain, but it is _herself_ Emori is trying to knit back together, a version of herself who cannot make love to Raven anymore.  
  
“No,” Raven says eventually, “I don’t.” She doesn’t break the gaze, and Emori is grateful for that. 

 _You were wrong_ she wants to say, except Raven hadn't been wrong. Emori wasn't hurt easily. Not usually.   
  
Later, when they kiss, Emori tries not to make it a goodbye. But it feels sharp and apologetic, like stitches, like something that will smart for a long time to come. Glass, maybe. Ashes. None of that. Nothing at all.

* * *

  
When John comes home, Emori brings him to her room, ignores her brother’s sputters of protest, and curls into him on the bed.  
  
“You survived,” she says, burying her face in his chest, taking in his scent.    
  
His posture tenses, and he pulls back, looks her in the face. Curiosity, recognition, sympathy. His eyes can never hide anything, not from her.  
  
“Ah,” he says.   
  
“Ah,” she echoes. Then she says, “John? Did burning things down ever really help?”  
  
“A little,” he says. “Want a match?”  
  
“No.” She caresses a lock of overgrown hair, tucks it behind his ear, even as the storm batters her heart.  


* * *

  
_Luna watches her lover sleep, not because she intended to, but because she cannot sleep herself._  
  
_On the nightstand are her own pills, neatly arranged. They're helping her keep the darkness at bay, the sickness of the mind that rises up and drives people out. Raven's textbooks are scattered everywhere, like she's let herself relax, become messy again. Maybe Emori helped her with that._  
  
_Raven won't talk to her about Emori, but she can read the story in her face. It's hard to see the meaningful things through so much turmoil, and she'd left Raven in plenty of that. Maybe Raven herself still doesn't know what the affair had meant to her. Idly, Luna runs a finger down Raven's shoulder, the coarse skin on her elbow, the curve of her wrist._  
  
_It is dark, shadows and a lone streetlamp sneaking through the window, but she can see Raven's hand clearly, how it curls instinctively, as though around something that isn't there.  
  
_


End file.
